Resident Evil: This Remake of a REmake’s Still Got It

2002’s Resident Evil remake lives again! Like any good zombie genre film, the original survival horror classic holds a special place in the hearts of hardcore fans. But only a small pool of players enjoyed the infamous REmake on GameCube, an excellent top-to-bottom recreation that flipped the well-known elements of the 1996 original into an even harder game. Revered as one of the greatest survival horror experiences ever made, Capcom has decided to remaster this ambitious game and release it for the latest round of consoles and the PC in early 2015. So far, the results are a tantalizing reminder of the genre’s early days.

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"Resident Evil is the game that really started and popularized the survival horror genre and the GameCube remake of the original stands as a unique masterpiece in the series," Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabyashi told IGN in an email interview. "We wanted to give players an opportunity to play this game, whether it be a repeat or for the first time, with improvements to the visual and audio quality."

"The original iteration of the game was released on hardware that now seems rather quaint in its prowess," Hirabyashi said. "The original team had to use a lot of tricks and roundabout ways of getting the high quality performance they needed. That means that we need to get under the hood, solve the puzzle of how the game is put together, and replicate the techniques they used at the time. This is no easy task. We’re finally at a point where we are able to do what we need to do to produce a high quality remastered version."

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Right from the opening cutscene, Resident Evil’s remake has plenty of bite and less of the cheesy, B-movie tier acting from the PlayStation original. OK, so some of it’s still silly, but the revamped visuals of this remaster do more than just present a prettier, spookier mansion in the woods.

I couldn’t help but notice the tiny details of the gorgeous pre-rendered backdrops in HD or how, combined with the excellent sound design, it comes together to put me on edge. Watching a brief flash of lighting in the Main Hall or hearing the guttural moans of rotting zombie enhances each suspense-filled moment, as I slowly get acquainted with a decrepit mansion I haven’t explored in almost a decade. Years of hindsight enhance the subtle, voyeuristic presentation of the fixed camera angles too. As if hundreds of hidden cameras were watching my every move as I uncover a mystery. The game has never looked or sounded better.

In line with 2002’s remake, the HD edition retains monsters like the eerie Crimson Heads – reanimated zombie corpses that shriek, run, tear at you with claws, and don’t flinch when shot at with a pistol (we have great footage of this) – and areas like the creepy graveyard tucked away in the main hall. But not everything is exactly the same.

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The game has never looked or sounded better.

For anyone not enthused about revisiting the Tank-like controls of the Resident Evil series, Capcom has added a modern scheme that handles similar to Devil May Cry. Using it, I could move Chris or Jill by pushing the PS4’s analog stick in the direction I want to run. The animation suffers slightly and loses some of its nuance with this new setup, but it still feels like a viable option. It remains to be seen if this change makes the overall game easier, but after exploring and fighting zombies in the tight hallways of the mansion for an hour, I didn’t find any reason to believe it robs Resident Evil of its signature tension.

"We haven’t implemented any actual difficulty changes to accompany the new control scheme," Hirabyashi explained. "We have left the enemy and item placement alone. However, we wanted to avoid the game feeling too simple with the new control option, so we were very careful with how we implemented it. We wanted to preserve the same general feeling, the same pacing and tempo present of the original."

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"Of course, even then, it won’t be identical to the way the game played with the original control scheme, so we’ve made it easy to change between these two styles at will in real time. That way, the user can utilize whichever scheme they are comfortable with in a given scene based upon their own play style and comfort level."

In many ways, Resident Evil’s remake is a relic of a bygone era: A time when survival horror could be scary but subtle, less driven by action and emphasizing the suspenseful unknown. For anyone willing to dip into a time capsule and experience one of the best Resident Evil games made, there’s certainly a lot here to enjoy.